Episode #207: How We Got Here From There {2nd}

Alas this flower is no more either. Bereft of life, it has joined the avian choir invisible. This is an ex-flower now residing in an herbal tea bag.

You can find part the 1st here.

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I started putting the process in motion when I had started writing, or rather, rewriting a few short stories. Nothing really hardcore, but did apply what I had learned previously and started trying to really flesh out one of the characters, with a concerted effort made towards female MC's as opposed to male MC's.

Exit ramp #1: Way early on, like at the very very beginning of my writing journey, I had developed strict guidelines for myself on how I should write both sexes. I would like to note that I have judiciously deviated from these rules from time to time, but overall I have stayed true to those guidelines.

Guideline #1: Males are to be written with both toxic masculinity traits as well as Walter Mitty-esque traits. 

Guideline #2: Females should be written always as strong independent woman (i.e. girl boss) with just a hint of vulnerability.

Reentering the highway.

Now what I mean by a concerted effort to make my female MC's more fully fleshed out is a bit convoluted, but I will try to explain the best I can.

I've always admired strong independent women, no matter the ethnicity, which for me translated to having better platonic work relationships with women, as opposed to men. So this has basically bled quite heavily into my stories, creating composite characters based on real world observations, etc. Because of this, I have been more comfortable in fleshing out my female characters.

Exit ramp #2: Way later in my writing life, I came to appreciate and understand certain aspects of the real world, so I decided to incorporate them into my storylines. You are forewarned.

Reentering the highway once again.

Now that comfort level of writing female MC's has spilled over into the way I write about relationships. Not so much M&F, which can be complex if the situation calls for it, but very much when it came to F&F, no matter where the pairing might be on the relationship spectrum.

Now truth be told is that over the preceding years, I have become quite accepting of what is common place behaviors or PDA among all segments of society (I'm 58 1/2, so it's taking me a bit of time to tweak my views), and because of this I have started to make a concentrated effort to work all of these emotional and physical complexities into my stories. While I have written some characters to have either lesbian or bisexual tendencies in my stories and novellas (one of my novellas has a gay secondary character that is featured throughout the story), it has become completely fleshed out in the four part series that I am currently working on.

Now that's not to say that every single character in the story leans that way, either blatantly or subtly. On the contrary, I used very normal and very intimate gestures and words to lend some ambiguity to the story, which also depends heavily on where and what the situation may be.

I can comfortably state with confidence that a little suggestive ambiguity can go a very long way towards implying how a certain scene should be interpreted. It has taken me quite a bit of time to learn how to show more by writing less. For years I thought sledgehammering to get a point across was the way to go. Turns out that using a hammer that is more suited for decorative or detailed work will often get the point across in ways that sledgehammering won't.

Now, I can use intimate gestures and words to get my point across about a particular character in ways that sledgehammering could never accomplish. And if I take those same words and enhance them with judiciously dropped background info, it can show these characters in a brand new light.

😎

Barring any pleasant surprises that may force a minor change in posting, you can tune in next Monday for part the 3rd of my series. Have a Spaceman Spiff Monday, a Transmogrification Tuesday, Dromedary Hump Wednesday, Turbo Tax Thursday and mourn the fact that TGIF has closed almost three dozen under-performing restaurants this month nationwide.*

*For those of you who might not get certain pop culture references, in successive order we have: A Calvin & Hobbes subplot x2, a type of camel, a tax software program and a restaurant chain that has taken the first step towards a possible chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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